Can India create its own Ivy League? The country is home to around a fifth of the world’s university-age population. Why are they going abroad? India has been losing academic talent to America for decades.
China and Europe luring American scientists: Dr. Patapoutian’s federal grant to develop new approaches to treating pain has been frozen. Within hours, he had an email from China, offering to move his lab to “any city, any university I want,” he said, with a guarantee of funding for the next 20 years.
Saver of Pakistan: Trump to be nominated for Nobel Peace Prize by Pakistan. . . . Trump is in awe of strongmen, alpha leaders, who stand up to him. Recall how Kim Jong-un of North Korea tamed him, and Putin has him on a leash.
Securing its world-domination: China-backed militia secures control of new rare earth mines in Myanmar. China has a near-monopoly over the processing of heavy rare earths into magnets that power critical goods like wind turbines, medical devices and electric vehicles. But Beijing is heavily reliant on Myanmar for the rare earth metals and oxides needed to produce them.
Morgan Stanley: China Is Maneuvering US “Into Weakness” When It Comes To Making Advanced Robots.
Urban Highways Suck: "Cars and highways are great. But neither of them belong in cities". . . From Atanu Dey's blog.
Car economy leaves India's middle class fuming: India has more than twice as many kilometers of roads per square kilometer of land as the US. China, which has built a lot of highways but chosen highspeed trains as the focal point of transport, has a much lower density.For intercity travel, India’s template ought to have been 21st-century China, not 20th-century America.
The fastest train journey between Chennai and Bengaluru takes over four hours. In that time, one could go from Beijing to Shanghai, a distance nearly four times greater. Within cities, subways are coming up even in places where they aren’t a practical option.
Tone it down on Khalistan: To be sure, there is no longer an active Khalistan insurgency in India, and Sikh extremist violence is rare now. One can ask what is gained by focusing so much attention on a relatively small group of people thousands of miles away who are committed to a cause that has essentially petered out in India itself.
Kids Addicted: Majority of Indian parents say their kids addicted to social media, OTT. "Gadget addiction by children between ages 9-18 has become the new reality. The addiction, in some children, is leading to emotional, mental and physical disturbances".
'Coaching industry is toxic': It is unnatural to study without any purpose day and night. Your personality gets stunted. "Many of my engineering friends who are following the typical definition of success, have an elevated 'unhappiness level'. Many who have cracked these exams are now planning to go into business. They are realizing this much later after having run too far into this race. They join the corporate world and some feel burnt out".
The coaching industry is the byproduct of a third world country. Since there are so many unemployed, it creates a competition among the unemployed. The institutes make you feel that if you clear the entrance exam you are very special.
NYT features Anand Malligavad: India’s ‘Lake Man’ relies on ancient methods to ease a water crisis... After Anand Malligavad tumbled into a lake, he thought he might die. Not from drowning, but the stench. Like hundreds of other lakes in Bengaluru, the one Mr. Malligavad suddenly found himself in was a receptacle for sewage, plastic debris and construction waste.
Millets for all: The pitfalls of growing too much wheat and rice can no longer be denied. The dominant varieties of these staples require large quantities of fertilizer, chemicals and water. They have been linked to lifestyle diseases. Meanwhile, the natural resource economy and nutritional benefits of millets are beyond dispute.
Layered AI: Huawei vows to build 'Computing Backbone' for China's AI ambitions. . . . China stimulates investments in chips with massive R&D incentives
. . . . . CHIPS Act tries to keep Quantum away from China. . . . China's third Exascale supercomputer reportedly comes online. Meanwhile, the US currently only has two exascale machines, Frontier and Aurora, in operation.
Poisonous prescriptions: The dark side of Indian pharma comes out with Africa's cough syrup deaths.. . . . India's lax drug regulatory mechanism under spotlight after 69 killed in Gambia.
Drug regulation in India beggars the imagination. The black hole that exists is not a racket, it’s a crime against humanity. It directly affects you, your children, your loved ones.
The Chips Act Shows How to Invest in Education: The Chips Act makes large-scale federal investment in innovative research and manufacturing of microchips. It has already stimulated private-sector investment designed to revive American microchip industry. Micron and IBM have announced investments of roughly $120 billion while Intel alone will invest $100 billion.
But what many don’t know about the Chips Act is that its significant federal spending goes beyond manufacturing, innovation, and incentives for research and development. The act provides $13.2 billion focused on R&D and workforce development with a specific investment in education and in science, technology, engineering, and math skills. It will offer a real pipeline from schools, to college, to career for many students.
The Universe Is Not Locally Real: And the Physics Nobel Prize winners proved it. One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half century is that the universe is not locally real. “Real,” meaning that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking; “local” means objects can only be influenced by their surroundings.
Daily Digital Detox: Village in Maharashtra declares "independence" from two modern-day addictions - television and mobile internet. At least, for a couple of hours every day.
With 5G here, data is the new alcohol: The heady alcohol of the superspeed connectivity that the future generation of consumers will live in and take for granted in the future.
Stop poking at us with Hindi rod: All four southern states carry the same message: Leave us alone, we are happy with our own culture and language. Imposing a new language and a new culture would be a farce.
Told you so: Rishi Sunak has earned some vindication, having made it clear he was ardently against fairytale economics of cutting taxes
Kaangress-like: Turncoats, internal feuds, centralized control -- BJP starting to resemble Kaangress.
Early cyclone detection: Indian scientists develop new technique that can detect tropical cyclones earlier than satellites!
Prior to the formation of a cyclonic system over the warm oceanic environment, the initial atmospheric instability mechanism, as well as the vortex development, is triggered at higher atmospheric levels. The method developed by the scientists aims to identify initial traces of pre-cyclonic eddy vortices in the atmospheric column and track its Spatio-temporal evolution.
Light and lightness: Sleeping and waking one hour earlier cuts risk of depression.. “Keep your days bright and your nights dark. Have your morning coffee on the porch. Walk or ride your bike to work if you can, and dim those electronics in the evening.”
Agrisolar: Solar farms could double as pollinator food supplies. In rural areas, an increase in pollinators can be beneficial to crops.
iOS15: China exempt from Apple 'private relay' privacy feature . . . . . . . . Big Tech is all woke if we are lenient.. grovels if we act tough!
Ladakh: 'Be ready with boots, bricks, bandobast'.. Chinese troops are not very far from the LAC -- 150-200KM. They can return to their previous positions in about 4-5 hours.
2-DG price: The final pricing of the 2-DG COVID-19 drug, touted as an “affordable” option, has left much to be desired with Dr Reddys
announcing a steep Rs 990 per sachet.
Covid Vaccine IP: How Big Pharma lobbied against India.. Lobby groups advocated not removing India from USTR priority watch list.
Mosquito hack cuts dengue by 77%: The trial used mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia bacteria. The bacteria make it much harder for dengue virus to replicate, so the mosquito is less likely to cause an infection.
Vegan advantage: A plant-based diet may lower severity of COVID-19 infection by 73%.. Those who reported eating a low carb-high protein diet had nearly four times the odds of having a moderate to severe infection.
Freeloader #2: Amartya Sen only Bharat Ratna awardee to avail free air travel.. He travelled 21 times between 2015 and 2019.
Freeloader #1: How Lutyens properties were usurped by the Nehru family
-:- Teen Murti Bhavan
-:- 1, Safdarjung Road
-:- 10, Janpath
Nowhere in the world, the official residences of govt heads are usurped in this manner
Who benefits from privacy? Is Telegram becoming the new alternative to the Dark Web? Cybercriminals are sharing illegally obtained private data without fear of reprisal
Over 200 bodies found at Indigenous school in Canada: From 19th century until 1970s, more than 150,000 indigenous children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools. They were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused. Up to 6,000 are said to have died.
Myocarditis: Israel reports heart problem link with Pfizer 2nd shot.
What is science? People talk glibly about science. What is science? People coming out of the university with a masters degree or a PhD, you take them into the field, they literally don't believe anything unless it is a peer reviewd paper - that is the only thing they accept. And you say to them, let's observe, let's think, let's discuss - they don't do it. It's just, is it in a peer-reviewed paper or not? That's their view of science. I think it's pathetic.
They go into universities as bright young people. They come out of them brain dead. Not even knowing what science means. They think it means peer-reviewed papers etc. No! That's academia and if a paper is peer reviewed it means everybody thought the same before they approved it. An unintended consequence is that when new knowledge emerges new scientific insights they can never ever be peer reviewed. So we're blocking all new advances in science that are big advances.
If you look at the breakthroughs in science almost always they don't come from the center of that profession they come from the fringe. The finest candle makers in the world couldn't even think of electric lights they don't come from within they often come from outside. We're going to kill ourselves because of stupidity.
Not a freeloader: Andhra sarpanch buys Rs 4 lakh ambulance with own money to aid villagers
Spreading disinformation:
Indian Bar Association Serves Legal Notice Upon Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the Chief Scientist, WHO.
Looting Karnataka: Black money heist case fuels internal feud in Kerala BJP. The origin of the havala money is a BJP office in Karnataka.
All resources are centralised at Delhi and route to power in Delhi goes via the poor but populous states of North. A natural consequence of this is unfair distribution of political and economic resources between politically strong and politically irrelevant states.
Warning from Indian scientists: India will lose edge over rivals if neutrino project delayed by another year.. An underground laboratory proposed in Tamil Nadu has been a non-starter for years.. "After a year, other competitors will be ahead of us and there is no second prize for discovery in science. The detector technology which TIFR and related institutes built is unique in the world. We have a unique way to do the experiment with proven ideas that no one in the world can match."
China will complete the construction of Underground Neutrino Observatory by 2022. Other neutrino experiments, such as Hyper-Kamiokande (Hyper-K) in Japan and the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) in the USA, are also under construction.
Karnataka can't keep China out of electric buses: India may have made rules to curb Chinese imports, but a look at transport corporations' efforts to procure 490 electric buses shows that there is no alternative to Chinese products for now, at least in the electric vehicle sector. . . . . world champs in history debates.
Project Hanson: How Chinese military contractor acquired Michigan dual-use manufacturer
First of five: China's first domestically built aircraft carrier to be combat-ready by year-end. Four more are in the works.
San Diego fraudster: Nimesh Shah, 37, was sentenced to almost four years in jail for
defrauding the Department of Veterans Affairs out of nearly $30 million
Interest from India and abroad: Tirupati's National Sanskrit University online courses evoke positive response from students
Challengeing the Paki Army openly: Pashtun Tahafuz Movement is turning into a thorn in Pakistan's flesh opposing its proxy war policy through jihadist groups.
Sadhguru welcomes paradigm shift in education: "Throwing information at children and thinking that we are educating should end... Schools will become less relevant... 2-days school, 5-days learning... Our idea of schooling comes from Machester mass production version of industry". . . . . . . Thoroughly insightful and entertaining conversation, do watch!
Tectonic shift: Now music schools take the e-learning route.
Growing fixation with Hindi: The Centre is obsessed with imposing Hindi on people who do not speak the language and who are not ready to work with it.
The surfaces that kill bacteria and viruses: Cicada wings are studded with tiny spikes on the surface that prevent bacterial cells from being able to settle and grow on the surface.
Sridhar Vembu's miracle: ZOHO: The most successful SaaS company you may have never heard of.
Temple scam: Rs 76 lakh has been misappropriated by Andhra Bank employees and Rs 66 lakh swindled by the SBI staff.
RCEP trap: Beijing desperately needs preferential access to markets such as India due to its tariff war with the US. This is a major driving force behind RCEP. Even without a Free Trade Agreement, Chinese goods swamp Indian markets.
String of pearls:
Deals with Thailand, Bangladesh show China's rise as warship exporter.
The largest user of Chinese weapon systems in India's neighbourhood has
been Pakistan
Point-of-Presence: China has been 'hijacking the vital internet backbone of western countries'
Unforeseen outcomes:
GM Mosquito project has gone wrong, failed experiment may have strengthened wild bugs. Not only did numbers bounce back up
in the months after the test, but some of the native bugs
had retained genes from the engineered mosquitoes.
Making a mockery of FDI norms: Indian's top trader body seeks ban on Amazon, Flipkart's festive season sale. “By offering deep discounts ranging from 10% to 80% on their e-commerce portals, these companies are clearly influencing the prices and create an uneven level playing field which is in direct contravention of the policy”.
“Only Catholics live in Poland”: US ambassador accused of offending Poland for Passover wishes, some calling it a “provocation.” Poland was home to Europe’s largest Jewish population before the 1939 occupation by Nazi Germany
CIA warning: Huawei is funded by Chinese state security
The self is a story line that develops in the head, very much like a fictitious creation. Yet it forms the basis of most people’s sense of who they are, and that sense, of course, is reinforced by the surrounding world.
You attack other people’s positions because you are defending a fictitious sense of self. You are so identified with your position that you feel the need to defend it as if it were your life. It’s not your life, of course . . . but that is what it feels like.
The good news is that you don’t need another thousand years to become free. All you need is to become present to this moment; to open yourself up to the fullness that already is, now.
You can't win against Walmart (or Amazon): U.S. considers withdrawal of zero tariffs for India -- strongest punitive action since Trump took office. The trigger was India’s new e-commerce rules that restrict Amazon.com Inc and Walmart-backed Flipkart. Also a factor is India's data localization drive against MNCs such as Mastercard and Visa.
Sharia too? Kaangress says it will scrap triple talaq law if voted to power
The miracle mineral the world needs: Compost can do something that mineral fertiliser cannot. It doesn't just provide phosphorus and other vital nutrients – it can also restore the soil structure by adding organic matter.
Ultracapacitor: Tesla's clever acquisition of Maxwell. One way that ultracaps can be recharged in a vehicle is through regenerative braking, wherein the kinetic energy of braking is captured and used to generate electricity that is then stored in the ultracap. This is something that Lamborghini is doing with Maxwell technology. Another use of an ultracapacitor in a vehicle is to take care of peak transient load requirements. When the battery system alone just can't get it done, then the ultracap can kick in to handle the electrical demand.
Physics suggests that the future has already happened: Our intuition tells us that the future can be changed, but Einstein's theory of relativity suggests that there is no real difference between the future and the past. The future, present and past may actually not be as different as we think.
Nuns 'sex slaves' scandal: Fresh blow to Catholic church. It is the first time that the pope has publicly admitted this abuse is taking place
The new science of learning: The best way to learn is taking a mixed up approach to practice. “The ultimate crime is practicing the same thing multiple times in a row”.
If and when a Congress-led khichdi coalition govt ever comes to power at the centre, it will show BJP leaders zero mercy--exactly the opposite of what BJP is showing Congress
Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil
Tasty and healthy: “Mustard oil also works well as an antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal agent and can help fight bacterial infections in the digestive system.” Incorporating mustard oil into your daily diet is known to protect against heart disease. The oil is rich in monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats, both of which help lower bad cholesterol and raise good HDL cholesterol.
Chandro Tomar: At 84, the world's oldest female sharpshooter doesn't miss
Nepal vote set to favor China over India: The communist alliance has prioritized rail and road networks with China and has already vowed to revive the Budhi Gandaki Hydropower Project if they gain power. Harder stance against India, softer towards China.
Naxals using kids as shields: "I was in Class 5 at an ashram in Sameep village. Once, I had to stay home because of fever. The local militia commander Ramlal took me away,"
‘Loss of Night’: Serious effects on the Earth’s ecology as artificial light is depriving the planet of its nights.
Extreme Heat:
Los Angeles is painting its streets white. To lower the temperature by
3 degrees over the next 20 years. Black pavement absorbs heat from the
sun... Read more.
My blueprint for the Uniform Civil Code: Parliament, state legislatures and courts shall not make laws or issue orders based on religious scriptures of any community, in keeping with the secular nature of the republic. The Constitution itself shall be the source for such orders and for further legislative improvements.
Amazon India: After losing China to Alibaba, Amazon taking no prisoners in India, the fastest growing e-commerce market globally.
Manu Prakash's Foldscope
: Now you can buy a tiny microscope made of paper. Prakash and his team just launched a Kickstarter campaign that allows anyone to reserve a foldable microscope kit of their very own for $15, or to reserve a 20-pack of scopes for $20.
Saturated fat may be healthy for you: "The very high intake of total and saturated fat did not increase the calculated risk of cardiovascular diseases. Participants on the very-high-fat diet also had substantial improvements in several important cardiometabolic risk factors, such as ectopic fat storage, blood pressure, blood lipids (triglycerides), insulin and blood sugar".
Cuba's excellent healthcare system isn't propaganda: An infant mortality rate of 4.2 per thousand births, life expectancy of 77 years for men and 81 years for women (on par with the UK’s life expectancy), and a doctor to patient ratio of one per 150, which surpasses many developed nations.
Mission Indradhanush: India has eliminated tetanus as a mass killer, one year after getting rid of polio.
Artificial state: "Since its founding in 1947, Pakistan has remained an artificial state that is uncertain of itself. The country is under major geopolitical stress -- in large part because of its rivalry with India. The expansion of its influence over Afghanistan is important to Pakistan because it gives it a feeling of strength."
Water scarcity: El Niño dries up the monsoon, could have impact next year too
Polluter will have to pay, finally: Delhi proposes congestion fees on different classes of Diesel heavy vehicles. The money thus collected will be used to improve public transport facilities. ... one hopes they execute this right
ISIS infiltrates Kobani: Kurdish forces are closing in on IS fighters in the town of Kobani in Syria, after the militants slaughtered at least 154 people in one of their biggest massacres of civilians in the country’s civil war.
Bend it like Albert: For over 2,500 years, scientists had assumed that space was a mere
container of the universe, a uniform and amorphous emptiness where
objects exist and things happen. Time was viewed as something ever
passing, irrespective of what happened.
“General relativity transformed these ideas completely. It replaced space and time with a jelly-like entity. This jelly can
shake, bend, stretch and compress. The equations written by Einstein
describe this stretching and bending of space and time itself”.
Einstein proposed that the presence of mass, through its
gravitational tug, can bend space and time and predicted that the Sun’s
gravitational field would subtly deflect starlight that passes close to
the Sun. Physicists continue to grapple with the challenge of trying to unify two grand theories of physics -- general relativity and quantum mechanics, the laws that govern the sub-microscopic world.
Two Indian physicists are now among the world's leading authorities
in these unification efforts. Abhay Ashtekar at the Pennsylvania State
University and Ashoke Sen at the Harish-Chandra Research
Institute in Allahabad are independently trying to solve the same
problem, but through two competing ideas. Ashtekar is among the pioneers of a unification theory called loop
quantum gravity, while Sen has pursued an alternative idea called string
theory.
Mohandas Pai on hyper-growth evangelism: "I have noticed over 30% of taxi drivers have converted over the last 5 years. Some 9-12% of undivided AP has been converted".
(They do all this silently, unlike the VHP folks who make loud noises after converting 20 people.)
Intrusion: Chinese hit back against a foreign intrusion: Christmas.
Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God: Astrophysicists now know that the values of the four fundamental forces—gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the “strong” and “weak” nuclear forces—were determined less than one millionth of a second after the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could not exist. For instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction—by even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000—then no stars could have ever formed at all. Feel free to gulp.
Multiply that single parameter by all the other necessary conditions, and the odds against the universe existing are so heart-stoppingly astronomical that the notion that it all “just happened” defies common sense. It would be like tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion times in a row. Really?
Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term “big bang,” said that his atheism was “greatly shaken” at these developments. He later wrote that “a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology . . . . The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”
Theoretical physicist Paul Davies has said that “the appearance of design is overwhelming” and Oxford professor Dr. John Lennox has said “the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”
Navratri Fast: Why India’s PM may not eat at the White House dinner
Go Solar: Solar thermal is expected to go below $25 – $30 per barrel (cost equivalence with oil) in the next 10 years.
What it costs to go solar today: Net-metering (the surplus you produce from your panels go to the electricity grid and you get a net balance in your favour including actual cash), can make solar revolution possible.
Chittagong SEZ: Bangladesh offers Indian companies land for SEZs, while seeking a new line of soft credit and
collaboration in launching its satellite.
Ordinarily, the pineal gland begins to release melatonin a couple of hours before your regular bedtime. The hormone reduces alertness and makes sleep more inviting. However, light — particularly of the blue variety — can keep the pineal gland from releasing melatonin, thus warding off sleepiness.
To counteract the effects of blue light from screen, researchers recommend a free app, F.lux, that automatically warms up the colors on your various screens — more reds and yellows — at sunset and returns them to normal at sunrise.
